Concerned about evidence of a systematic state-run campaign to discredit
Peru's independent press, CPJ staff members traveled to Lima in June as part
of an international delegation of press freedom organizations. Attacks on
the press declined in the immediate aftermath of the visit -- which included
interviews with President Alberto K. Fujimori and other high officials --
but increased again at year's end, as a series of scandals continued to damage
the government's popularity.

Criminal gangs are responsible for a growing share of violence against
journalists in Latin America, but in Peru there is clear evidence of government
involvement in a campaign against the press that has included jailings,
detentions, threats, and constant surveillance. In March, several tabloid
newspapers in Lima began publishing pieces attacking prominent investigative
journalists, accusing them of being communists, traitors, and "prophets of
the devil." The articles stopped appearing after the press freedom delegation
met with Fujimori, but resurfaced again in August on a website which journalists
say was created by the intelligence services to discredit government
opponents.

Independent journalists also experience cruder forms of intimidation. They
allege that they are often followed, and that their phones are tapped. Government
pressure has forced two television programs off the air -- one temporarily
and one permanently. There has also been sporadic violence. In August, the
house of Hugo Guerra, an editor with the Lima daily El Comercio,
was hit by gunfire.

Peru and Cuba are the only countries in the Americas where journalists are
serving jail sentences for crimes relating to their work. Four journalists
remain in jail on terrorism charges after being sentenced by hooded military
judges in 1994 and 1996. A fifth was jailed in November after he read a
communiqué from the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA)
on the air.

The fact that journalists can work at all under such difficult conditions
owes a great deal to the efforts of the Instituto de Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS),
a Lima-based press organization founded in 1993 that has systematically monitored
abuses and pressured the authorities to respond. While most of the attention
has been paid to journalists in Lima, in November IPYS established a 24-hour
toll-free telephone number so that journalists in the provinces could report
press freedom violations. IPYS was immediately deluged with dozens of complaints
from provincial journalists about criminal defamation prosecutions, threats,
and detentions.